


Hunger

by Eralk Fang (EralkFang), imochan, reserve



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Enthusiastic Naturalists, Flirting With Juices, Fruit, Gifts in Space, Hand Feeding, Kissing, Kylo Ren is a Creep, Licking, M/M, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 19:14:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7544593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EralkFang/pseuds/Eralk%20Fang, https://archiveofourown.org/users/imochan/pseuds/imochan, https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/pseuds/reserve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren keeps returning from missions with gifts for Hux. Neither one of them is really sure what it means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunger

_The bloodfruit is native to two ecosystems on the Thorulkan secondary homeworld. In the first, and southern system, it grows heartily and with abundance on the low-hanging branches of the punica tree that line riverbeds and shorelines. The fruit matures in the early summer months, growing to roughly six or seven inches in diameter, with a plump purple-red coloring and a high sheen. To harvest, simply pluck. If ready to be consumed, the bloodfruit will fall easily off the branch; it can be opened with a sharp knife, or an artful and practiced twisting of the hands. The two halves will reveal a thick, white, and bitter membrane of pith, which cradles the copious clusters of seeds that gives the bloodfruit its name: dark red and jewel-like in color and shine, with a translucent and visceral appearance, they can be loosened with the fingers or a utensil, and eaten whole. The texture should be firm but eventually yielding, squeaking against the teeth until the juices are burst. The flavor should be sharp and sweet, with an undercurrent of copper or saline._

_Also known as: bloodapple, fruit-of-eyes, lover’s heart._

\--

There are no more than five things on General Hux’s personal desk at any given time. His data console sits off to the right, the silver stylus his father gave him upon receiving his first promotion rests in its cushioned case, a tiny pedestal which, when activated, projects a holo of the more immediate star systems finds a home on the left hand side, and the small rectangular inbox he uses for flimsiplast documents rests beside it. Next to the console is his carefully tended, miniscule bonsai tree: an indulgence.

This cycle, there is an unexpected sixth item, sitting amidst the normal array, when Hux returns to his office. Its round shape is obscured by unassuming brown wrapping, and it is unfortunately accompanied by Kylo Ren just back from mission. 

Hux takes in the scene with the kind of long-suffering detachment that Ren has forced him to perfect. He sighs. 

“Please,” he says, looking somewhere past Ren, “don't tell me you've returned with human remains again.”

“You _liked_ the skulls,” Ren says, already sulky. 

“Because they were just bones, not—” Hux shudders. “The hearts were altogether _ghastly_.” 

“It's not a heart.” Ren’s great masked head nods at the tiny package. “Open it.” 

One of the two receiving chairs before Hux’s desk pulls out of its own accord and Hux feels a tug at his midsection; Ren urging him to sit with his particular brand of persuasion. _Sorcery_. He bats at himself as though it were possible to brush Ren off, and sits. 

“Go on,” Ren says. The package wiggles a little. 

Hux resists the urge to roll his eyes and snatches it up. It’s no larger than a phaseball, and sturdy in his hand; a comfortable fistful. He starts to unwrap it while Ren looks on, his gaze piercing and heavy even with the helmet. Not for the first time, Hux wonders what could possibly be under there, what foul visage Kylo Ren has taken such pains to hide. He has, for most of their acquaintance, been convinced that Ren is not quite human. Although his form, beneath all those layers, bears the shape of a humanoid male, there is something otherworldly about him, something uncanny. He could be a corpse reanimated, for all Hux knows. A corpse that brought him a gift. 

The brown wrapping reveals an opulently red globe, marbled in places with purple bruising. At its tip: a round protrusion, like a funny nipple, where a stem may have been. Its exterior is hard, shell-like, and reflective. 

“What is this?” Hux raises his eyes to Ren. And Ren, who has placed himself in a casual lean along one wall, reaches out for the object Hux holds, and takes it. 

“It’s a bloodfruit,” he says, turning it over in his gloved hands as though inspecting it for imperfections. “Prized where I’ve just come from, rare, and a symbol of righteousness.” 

“So you eat it.” 

“Yes, General, you eat it.” 

Hux swallows against a sudden parchness. Perhaps he would have preferred a heart. 

“This is better,” Ren says, a tiny huff of mechanic laughter escaping from his mask. He must have just very ungraciously skimmed Hux’s mind. 

Before Hux can admonish him for his inability to respect boundaries, he is distracted by Ren stepping in close, looming with the bloodfruit nearly level with Hux’s face. He watches, captivated, as Ren jabs his thick thumbs into the fruit’s shell indelicately, then digs them in deeper before _pulling_ the flesh apart with an obscenely wet _pop._ The rended halves reveal bright, jewel-red nodes nestled together in white flesh. They are succulent looking baubles, packed in so tightly they could be a singular mound, but a few dislodged by the trauma escape into Ren’s gloved palms and glitter there against the black. 

“Oh,” Hux breathes, still staring.

“Try them,” Ren says, lowering his hands: an offering. “The red only. The white is bitter.” 

Hux takes off his gloves slowly, feeling vaguely cautious of this strange fruit and its tempting innards. He has never had an overt fondness for food, preferring convenience over pleasure, practicality over sensory experience. He has, for most of his adult life, subsisted on ration bars, cup noodle, and stale caf, occasionally making an exception for a rare bantha steak when his skin took on an anemic pallor. He cannot remember the last time he was presented with something quite so vibrant and edible that wasn’t fully sentient first. 

“It almost _looks_ like a heart,” Hux says. He cups his palm gingerly, like a child awaiting candy. 

“It does.” Ren sounds amused as he tips some of the plump little seeds into Hux’s bare hand. They stain his skin immediately. “Something to slake some of that unspent bloodlust, since you so rarely join us in the field.” 

Hux remembers to glare at the insult too late, tripped up by unexpected excitement. “Can I eat them whole?” he asks instead. 

“ _Yes,”_ Ren says. His voice is strangely emphatic, a little choked. “It's recommended.” He puts the torn open fruit down on the desk and fidgets. 

Hux peers down at this palm, at the tiny, bright red sacks against his skin. He considers bursting one between his thumb and forefinger. He considers declining to eat them at all, but Ren is looking at him with such focus that Hux feels he can't refuse. 

“Why don't you eat them yourself?” 

Ren shrugs. “Can't.”

“But—” 

“Would you just. _Please_ , General.”

Still feeling suspicious, Hux picks up one seed and brings it to his mouth. He swears Ren’s breath changes through his vocoder when he pops the seed between his lips and rolls it over his tongue, feels its delicate skin and ripe flesh.

“Bite down,” Ren says. 

Hux does. He traps the seed between his molars and crunches it. The juice—the burst of juice, sweet and bitter at the same time, that invades his mouth—shocks him as he chews through the seed, feels it lodge pieces of its body in his teeth. He plucks up two more seeds and presses them against the roof of his mouth until they pop against his tongue. Only then does he chew and swallow, all with Ren looking on. 

“How does it taste?” 

Three more seeds almost past his lips, Hux stops. “Very sweet,” he says. “The texture is. Different.” 

“Different how?”

“I've never had anything like it.” 

“Good,” says Ren. “Keep the rest. Finish it.” 

Hux narrows his eyes, but before he can speak, Ren has turned and gone. Hux puts another bloodfruit seed in his mouth and considers the torn fruit as he delicately chews. It really does look rather like a heart.

\--

 _Glaciarian bivalves are found in the southwestern hemisphere of the main planet and a variant on its third moon: they grow crusted in communes of six to seven dozen on the ceiling undersides and columnar growths of the submerged ice caves. The bivalve, called an_ oyster _by some, feeds on the carbonate cycle of the saltwater sugarweed, and is a vital component of this delicate and rare ecosystem. In a mature bivalve the shell is roughly the size of a child's palm, and should be slightly oblong, with a crisp and crackled texture of marbled dark blue and white. To open the shell, three sharp raps with the flat of the knuckle should be delivered to the calcified and knotted "neck" of the bivalve, whereupon the basic nervous system is rendered inert and the shell will open along the lip. The muscle of the bivalve will be pink and fleshy, pleasantly firm and veined in darker red. It can be eaten raw or cooked: the taste is vaguely dirty and sweet, the result of the sugarweed, with a briny tang. Prized among indigenous cultures for its healing benefits when clarified into a pink and slightly herbaceous broth, and when eaten raw with saltwater, as an aphrodisiac._

\--

It is deep into ship’s night when Hux finally returns to his quarters. Relief rushes over him as soon as his door slides open, and the hiss it makes as it closes behind him is like a balm for his raw nerves. His co-commander, the rogue element that haunts his ship, has been away on orders from Leader Snoke yet again and Hux is uneasy. Nearly as uneasy as he feels with Ren breathing down his neck. 

He has appreciated Ren’s time off-ship, he always does for the tranquility of it, but now he is plagued by a gnawing anticipation for Ren’s return as well. It is a disconcerting spark of interest that resides low in his belly, a permutation of _hunger_ that he can't seem to abate. He finds himself wondering when Ren will return with frightening persistency, wondering what Ren will bring for him this time, helplessly occupied by it, as though Ren has somehow ensorcelled him. Ren has been away for nearly a fortnight now, and the spell remains intact. 

Hux has removed his gloves and is undoing his shirt collar when his door chimes, and he knows without knowing that Kylo Ren stands in the hall as though summoned by his thoughts alone. 

He hesitates before granting Ren access. Some lingering sense of propriety holds him back. They have somehow veered off the course of what their relationship should be. He lets Ren in despite this, and Ren brings the scent of salt and sea with him, like the ocean wind from wherever he has come has buffered him back aboard. 

Ren doesn't offer so much as a hello, but Hux can see he carries something with him. 

The vessel’s handle—Hux can only think to call it a bucket—glints in Ren’s hand as it swings low by his side. When Ren comes to a halt beside the low table that sits between the pair of armchairs in Hux’s receiving room, Hux hangs back. The few times Ren has come to him bearing souvenirs from a recent journey, they’ve been contained, small, generally colorful and packaged drably. One memorable time he brought back sweet, syrupy wine and silently watched Hux drink about a quarter of the bottle before making an hasty excuse and departing. Hux had proceeded towards intoxication on his own. 

The bucket is an altogether new development. 

“Don’t worry,” Ren says, speaking at last. He lifts it up between two hands. “Nothing in here bites.” 

“I wasn’t worried,” Hux says, forcing himself to move closer. 

“Okay.” 

“I’m _not_.” 

Ren shrugs one, huge shoulder, then he upends the contents of his haul onto Hux’s poor, helpless table with a loud crash. 

Hux winces. 

“Just caught from the Bannion Sea.” Ren gestures at the table with a grand, sweeping movement. 

_Ah, that smell_ , Hux thinks. 

Ren inclines his head toward his offering like he’s waiting for Hux to express his gratitude. “They’re very fresh,” he says. 

Hux’s lip curls up unintentionally into a dismayed sneer. The melting, chipped ice Ren has dumped onto his personal property is distracting. “You've brought me rocks. Wet rocks.” 

“They’re not rocks. They’re—” Ren makes a low, grumbling sound. “Bivalves. Fruit of the sea.” He pulls a small, pointy knife from somewhere inside his robes and Hux takes a step back. “Oysters, to some.”

Ren scoops up one of the glistening bivalves and shakes it off, hands it to Hux before taking another for himself. Hux can see now that the edges are ruffled, the calcified exterior cresting and falling like ocean waves. Parts of the dark grey shell are marred greenish-white and shot through with an iridescent blue. He turns it over in hands, runs his fingerpads over the wet ridges. Ren grasps a broad, flat thing in his own gloved palm and with his other hand he brings the knife up to the thick back of it. He wiggles the tip into a barely visible seam between the top and bottom halves. 

Hux is, perhaps, unduly fascinated. 

“It’s still alive,” Ren says. “You need to separate the shell from the muscle, and sever the bits that keep it closed. Watch.” 

With a sure turn of his wrist, he shifts the knife and Hux can _hear_ its edge scrape along the top of the shell. He can hear it slide through living flesh with a sort of wet, sucking sound. He finds himself imitating it with the corners of his mouth just to hear it again. Then the knife grinds through what must be the hinge and Ren lifts off the top of the shell with a subtle crack. 

A shiver goes through Hux, his stomach flips. But he does not get a clear look at the outcome of Ren’s labor until he has disturbed the interior of the shell, his knife twisting sharply, before he presents his work to Hux. Held out for his inspection is a pinkish muscle cupped in pearlescence, its surface veined with deep red lines. It glistens in a tiny amount of water and has a bulbous, obscene quality, the appearance of something that should not be seen, that should remain in its shell and hidden. Despite the clarity of the liquid Hux can't help but think that it looks rather _filthy_. 

“You'll want to sit,” Ren says, so Hux perches himself on the arm of one plush chair. 

Ren steps in closer to him, his tremendous thighs nearly brushing Hux’s own much slimmer hips. This near Hux can smell him: forest fires, the strange spice of him. And he can smell Ren’s wet offering too, a sharp clean scent: unexpected, and the briny seaside that arrived with him: expected. 

“After the Yavian ice wine this is something of a disappointment,” Hux says. 

“This has its own merits. Untouched until now, more pure than manipulated grapes.” 

Hux presses his lips together and hums. 

“Open your mouth,” Ren says. “Tip your head back.” He lifts the odd edge of the shell to Hux’s mouth, the flat side of his gloved hand pressing to his chin. 

“Ren, this isn't—” Hux begins, unsure of what he's protesting. 

“Shhh, the edge is sharp, don't speak. Don’t use your teeth.” 

Hux obediently opens his mouth and flattens his tongue down. He feels salt water trickle into his mouth, onto his lower lip, as Ren tilts the shell up, ready to spill out its contents. 

“If you swallow slowly you can feel it throb against your throat,” says Ren, just as the fat, cool, fleshy thing slides past Hux’s front teeth and onto his tongue. It feels impossible thick in his mouth, slick and strange. 

“Swallow,” Ren urges. “If you like it you can chew the next one.” 

Hux forces himself to swallow, almost gagging on the body of the oyster as it breaches his throat and he works it down. His eyes water at the edges and then his hand is at his throat, pressing at his adam’s apple. He thinks can feel the bivalve pulse in his esophagus, but that could just be his heartbeat. 

“Oh my stars,” he says. He can still sense it. 

“How does it taste?” Ren asks. He has moved closer. 

“Like the sea. What I remember of it. Like something implacable but familiar.”

Ren reaches down and Hux tenses, afraid Ren intends to touch him, but he only grabs another oyster and puts his knife to it. 

“I don't want another,” Hux says.

“You need to chew this one.” The knife scrapes across the shell. “Otherwise you won't truly know the taste.” Ren presents it to him. “Go on,” he says, his helmet tilting in the familiar way that means there is no other option.

Hux looks at him dead on and parts his lips. 

\--

Ren brings him ficus fruits, plump sacs of scarlet-and-yellow seeds spilling on his tongue when the peel snaps away under his teeth. He brings delicate cured meats, pink and translucent and layered like curls of chiffon, leaving slicks of pale oil on the white paper, on Hux’s fingers, a sheen of it lingering on his lips with the salt-and-leather taste. There are then following the innards of yellow squash like thin ropes of strange stained pearls, nutty and smeared with the flavor of sharp, young grass. Sweet prawns the color of sunset pricking the underside of thick clouds: here he is instructed to pierce the thin crackling exoskeleton at the belly with a thumbnail, splitting the body with a twist of his wrists, to suck the wet and glistening white flesh from the remnants of the shattered shell, from the bowed and praying head. He licks his fingers afterward. (This is not suggested, but Ren does not seem to mind.) Later still, he is brought an odd and obsidian tuber root the size of his fist, which Ren shaves with a silver knife into showers of fluttering, thin pale wings over a puddle of hot and molten lard, suffocating the room with a scent like molding earth, wet skin, hot breath, sending something wriggling and illicit coursing up from his belly.

He is brought these things, and more. It is carefully ritualized. He is instructed, he eats. He is _fed_. And Ren watches, but does not partake. 

\--

_The Balosorian gemnut is found on the system homeworld, where it grows in thick clusters amongst the mountain underbrush. The gemnut plant is stout and vinelike, with dark green frond leaves, and the blossoms are pale, five-pointed, and short-lived, preferring to bloom only in the ideal mixture of shade, sun, and moisture produced at the end of the mist season. The pubescent gemnut is bright green, smooth, and rock-hard, unyielding to teeth or stone or knife. When ripe, the outer layer of the gemnut thins to a dappled and rough-textured peel, and takes on a dark red coloration, while the fruit itself grows to be approximately 8 cm in diameter. The peel may be pierced easily and discarded to reveal the gemnut flesh which is pale pink and iridescent, sweet and floral, with a springy, delightful texture. Beneath the flesh lies the gemnut's dark secret, and its most impressive protective adaptation: the gemnut seed. Smooth and round, shiny and black, the seed is found at the center of the fruit and is lined with a delicate and translucent membrane. If the membrane is pierced and the gemnut seed makes contact with exposed skin, tongue, or lips, it releases a potent neurological toxin, which among mammals has proven to have a fatality rate of 90-95%. As such, the gemnut is largely ignored by indigenous fauna, except for the rootrat, whose surprisingly complex parasympathetic nervous system and calcified snout provide adequate protection against the gemnut's potential threat. If consumed properly, however, the gemnut is known to produce mild euphoria: either the result of some residual bleed of the toxin within the flesh of the fruit, or perhaps a psychological effect of having cheated death._

\--

Ren has been gone for five days: this time to some faint and watery spot of light on the astral maps. Under some orders, increasingly vague and esoteric to Hux’s ears. No longer: _quash this rebellion_ or _ensure there is order for our refueling routes_ , but now: _there have been whispers_ , and _you know what to look for_.

Hux doesn't know. He feels the beginning of a chasm growing between their purported shared goals. Something new and glistening and feeble insinuating itself in the air between them when they leave the holochamber, Snoke’s voice like a heavy fog and the excavation plans for the icy dead planet beneath them burning a hole in his pocket. Ren leaves now, and Hux finds himself with a quivering combination of anticipation and fear settling in his gut.

In his quieter moments, Hux realizes he has been imagining Ren sidling silently into market stalls in the dark of some alien planet’s night, pilfering jewels of fruit and handfuls of pungent roots, stuffing them in his pockets and into the sleeves of his robes like a miscreant child. Raiding errant shipping trawlers. Stepping over the still-bleeding body of an unfortunate smuggler to retrieve ingots of gold-skinned grapes, buds of edible flowers, a bouquet of iron-rich oceanic herbs. To bring back to the General _._

He has never once supposed that Kylo Ren would _pay_ for these bits of treasure. As if it that would be too much of a human impulse, too strangely familiar to his own meager and derisive understanding of—what, exactly, he is still not certain. It would unnerve him less, he thinks, if he knew what about it was fulfilling to Ren. What part of his alien brain or cybernetic mind responded to this game of spoils, the ritual of divulging, consuming, _watching_. 

When he steps through the doors into his quarters now, long into Sixth Shift, his security panel burbles a pert, red warning at him. As if he could possibly be unaware at this point of Ren bypassing the safeguards and letting himself in unannounced. He has never been one for mysticism, but it is often as if Ren leaves behind him a wake of disturbed molecules. The air where he has been lingers with something seared, a soldered amputation of oxygen.

He finds Ren in his private berth, leaning up against the transparisteel portal with his arms crossed over his large chest, head turned to the wheeling orbit of stars. Hux takes a moment to scan the room for evidence of Ren’s—gift. Smaller than usual, it takes him several seconds to locate it where it is perched in a small, dark brown clump on the surface of his console desk. He walks forward slowly, pausing to press his fingertips to the edge of the dark, smooth surface of the desk and peering down at the strange little offering. Whatever they are, there are four of them: spherical, rough-textured, about the size of a human eye.

“You're back early,” he says, not looking up.

“You’ll like this one,” says Ren, unfolding his arms and striding halfway to the desk.

 _Eager_ , thinks Hux, unbidden.

“Oh?” He feigns disinterest. Tugs off his gloves carefully, finger by finger, and folding them onto the surface of his desk by the console. He makes to turn it on, to settle into his chair and review his end-of-shift report, as if there isn't a reciprocal sense of urgency thrumming in his own body, but Ren’s vocoder makes a tight and hissing noise, an angry intake of air.

“You’ll like it,” says Ren, again. “It's different.”

He pauses. Gives an artfully impassive glance at the little nodules resting on his desk. They are small, unremarkable; bound together by a thin, dried vine. Dark brown, perhaps a little tinged towards the red spectrum, with an uneven, bark-like surface.

“Nuts,” he says. 

“Fruit,” says Ren. One gloved hand hanging at his side flexes, makes a fist. “You like fruit.”

“It doesn't look like fruit.” He reaches out and lets his fingers graze the bubbled, knotty rind. Pinches one between a finger and thumb and turns it, examining.

“Careful,” says Ren, low in his throat and crackling through the mask. 

He stills, but doesn't release it. “Dangerous?”

Ren is silent, for a moment. Something is buzzing steadily and faintly in the distance. A droid in the corridors, perhaps, or the air-cleaners in the vents.

“Particular,” says Ren, finally. “Sit.”

Somewhere between defiance and acquiescence, Hux instead leans against the edge of his desk. Presses the backs of his thighs to the sharp edge of it, crosses his feet at the ankles, leans backward to pick up the cluster of fruit by the vine.

“Particular, how?” He places them on his palm, frowning down at them. Ren advances another several steps, until he’s looming into Hux’s space, one hand raised as if he might reach out and pluck them from Hux’s hand.

“They’re gemnuts,” says Ren. “From Balosor. They’re toxic.”

“You’ve brought me _poison_ fruit,” says Hux, lip curling. “My, the game has changed now, hasn’t it?”

Ren’s mask spits out a heavy, mechanical huff. It sounds to Hux half-frustration, half-mirth. As if whatever were behind that helmet could _laugh_.

“Not poison,” Ren says, and his gloved hand reaches out to hover by Hux’s fingers where they are curled tentatively around the gemnut cluster. “Just the seed is toxic. Inside. The fruit should be eaten—carefully.”

Hux squints at him. “So not certain death, then.”

“No.”

“—Just a half-cocked round of one-sided Mandalorian Roulette.” He snorts; makes to discard the handful of now-treacherous feeling little fruits back on the desk where they belong. “I think I’ll decline.”

“Wait.” 

Ren’s massive hand is suddenly encircling his wrist, just above where the hem of his sleeve meets the flesh of his palm, holding him in place. His grip is _strong_ ; Hux feels the muscles in his hand twitch, reflexively, helplessly, at the sudden contact. Something not altogether unpleasant contracts in his chest, thickening the air in his lungs. The cluster of gemnuts suddenly feel heavy in his palm. Ren’s gloved thumb is pressed directly against the pulsepoint of his wrist. He swallows.

“Ren—”

“Wait,” says Ren, again, softer on the edges this time. “I’ll show you.”

There is a beat, where all Hux can hear is that same distant whirring in the vents, an unsettling and thrumming reminder of how alone they are, like this, together: how wholly unstable— _unreliable_ —this space between them has become. 

“Show me?” His own voice sounds embarrassingly rough.

And Ren releases his wrist. Lifts both hands to the underside of his helmet, presses his thumbs into the hidden latches, and Hux’s pulse leaps up into his throat when they disengage with a bright and static hiss. 

He’s not sure what he expected. In the space of a microsecond, his mind scatters, fluttering over all the things he imagined were hiding behind the mask: a pale and gleaming neural knot of droid circuitry, a dozen rows of thousands of sharp and glistening fangs, saliva seeping from their pointed ends, a single great and sucking maw like the tentacle of a sarlacc, something less defined and amorphously unformed: damaged and unrecognizable, beyond help. Not—this.

A sullen, plush bottom lip. A wide, soft mouth. A gently crooked nose. A long, pale face: dotted with a sparse constellation of dark melanin spots at the heavy arc of his eyebrow, the corner of lips, the curve of his cheek, his jaw. Oddly vulnerable large brown eyes. Young: younger than himself, even. Unsettlingly lovely and—horribly, _human_. 

Ren leans forward to deposit his helmet on the desk by Hux’s hip, and Hux—in a moment of freakish, terrible instability—feels as though some cosmic order has been monumentally upended by the fact that he’s spent the last half-dozen weeks shoving galactic delicacies past his own less-than-impressive lips when this perfect wide bow of a mouth had been hidden behind that _stupid_ mask the whole time.

“You’re panicking,” says Ren. When Hux can tear his gaze away, and up, Ren’s eyes are narrowed, a little smug.

“I’m not— _panicki—”_

He is. Maybe a little. Between Ren’s bare face and the poisonous little baubles still clutched in his sweating palm, he feels like someone has backed him into a faulty airlock with a blaster to his temple.

“Stop it,” says Ren. “Watch.”

With both hands, he reaches to Hux’s palm. With his right, he grasps the stem of the gemnut; with his left, he grasps one of the small fruits with his thumb and finger and twists it, tugging. It snaps off, soundlessly and easily. Clutched there in black leather, against the sheer size of Ren’s hands, the little globe looks even smaller, somehow vulnerable, no matter what Ren may have claimed about its vicious insides.

“Eyes up, General,” says Ren.

It feels like snapping to attention, that same sharp inhale of air into his lungs, when he watches Ren bring the gemnut to his mouth. Ren’s lips part, and there is a flash of white teeth snagging on the thin outer peel of the fruit; Hux can almost feel the hitch-and-drag of it against his own tongue when Ren rotates the gemnut in his fingers, revealing the wet, pearlescent flesh underneath. 

There is a slick of juice on Ren’s lower lip, on his chin, when he is finished, the peel fallen to the floor in a fetal curl. The leather of his gloves is wet at the fingertips. The gemnut, fully stripped now, looks vaguely disturbing: a quivering tiny sphere, pale pink and glistening like a nervous eye. The air is perfumed, distinctly floral, almost sickly.

Ren holds the little thing just apart from his lips; when he speaks next, a shiver runs hotly up the back of Hux’s nape, as if it is Ren’s breath ghosting over his exposed skin.

“This is the particular part.” 

Ren says it with his teeth bared. They catch one more time, lightly, almost _delicately,_ just on the edge of the gemnut’s flesh. When Ren tilts his head, there is the softly obscene noise that accompanies the sight of the gemnut coming apart neatly under his mouth, the small black eye of the pit winking out at Hux beneath the peeled sections.

“The seed,” says Ren, and holds out the fruit: the bits of its soft flesh dangling from where their thin membranes attach to the center. “Here. Don’t touch it. Not with your mouth. Not your teeth. Not your—bare hands. Just the fruit.”

The other orders are implicit. Ren is holding the opened gemnut _just_ too far from Hux. He will have to lean into it, to take it, precisely as Ren has said. His gloves are on his desk. He could lean back and snap them back on: pluck the gaping, wounded bit of fruit from Ren’s hands and feed it to himself, safely. This too is implied, that this is notthe play at hand. That instead when he leans in, he should take it with his _tongue_. 

He braces his free hand against the edge of the desk. Uncrosses his ankles and presses his feet flat to the floor. Meets Ren’s gaze with his own—an open challenge—and parts his lips. Ren doesn’t move from where he is, less than a foot away with one hand raised between them, the gemnut dripping juice over Ren’s gloves, and onto the floor. 

Hux presses the tip of his tongue to the inside of his teeth: considers the approach. When he tilts his head, just a little, cranes his neck so that Ren’s fingers are just a hairsbreadth from his mouth, he can see the exact moment that Ren’s pupils dilate; he can hear, barely audible above the humming churn of recycled air, the wet little catch of breath in the back of Ren’s throat. There is a flood of sudden sweetness on his tongue, just as he feels the trembling bit of fruit graze his teeth. Ren’s gloved knuckles graze the tip of his nose, and there is a musk of leather and human sweat smearing across his palette, just as he snags the gemnut flesh with his teeth and tugs it free, into his mouth.

“How does it taste?” Ren murmurs. It sounds jarring, to hear it this time without the mask as a buffer between them.

“Sweet,” he says, chewing. “Like honey, almost. It’s—deceptive.” 

“Deceptive,” Ren echoes, like he might not understand. His eyes look a little glassy; Hux thinks wildly for a moment that the scent of the fruit might also have some latent drug, some soporific floral fog wafting into the air, making his own tongue feel thick and heavy in his mouth. 

“Like a trap,” he says. He swallows; wets his lips. Watches Ren’s gaze dip to his mouth. “More.”

“What?” Ren looks oddly unsteady, his gaze still unfocused.

“More,” he repeats; it’s an order.

Ren’s lashes flutter briefly, his black pupils tighten and narrow when he meets Hux’s gaze. “Open up, then,” he says.

Warmth is prickling at Hux’s cheeks, at the back of his neck, when he leans in again. Something sticky and ripe is blooming in his chest, making his breath stutter in his throat. Something vermicular has got its thick and creeping roots in him, as if they were squeezing at his thighs and hips and wrists and ankles, immobilizing and thrilling. Something as hot and sharp as venom is pooled in his gut; he thinks he sees it looking out at him from Ren’s large, dark, human eyes. Something surging and bold coils upwards into his chest even as he swallows down. It tastes as though a bloom of flowers has sprung up, wriggling and bright, on his tongue. Saliva floods, hot and strange, at the back of his throat.

“Do you always have to do it with your mouth?” He asks. 

“No,” says Ren. There is still juice smeared on his chin. His lips are shiny. Behind his teeth, the wet, black space of his mouth; Hux thinks of the poison pit.

Ren reaches forward to Hux’s upturned palm where the gemnuts still rest, twists off another fruit with the pinch of his fingers.

“Now,” he says. He lifts his hand, presses the swell of the unpeeled gemnut lightly to Hux’s bottom lip. “Your turn.”

Their eyes meet again. Hux bares his teeth.

\--

_The plumgarnet is the largest of the stone fruits native to the planets of the Tinnel system. While it was first domesticated and cultivated in the Southern Basins of Tinnel II, the plumgarnet tree is a popular choice for both greenhouses and gardens the system over. This is due to its three chief attributes: its ease of cultivation, its remarkably efficient root system, and its handsome lanceolate foliage. While the plumgarnet tree, which can grow up to 10 m, bears fruit as early as the vernal equinox, it is best harvested in summer. The ideal plumgarnet is large enough to palm comfortably, with deep purple skin and firm, slightly acidic, but sweet flesh that is faintly translucent when held up against the light. Its freestone should be glossy, black, and craggy. Plumgarnet is traditionally enjoyed either fresh or, due to its climacteric nature, as all-purpose preserves, although plumgarnet bloodwine is currently popular as a solution to the lackluster vintages plaguing the system._

\--

When Ren returns from Tinnel IV, Hux wants to ignore him. Determines, even, to do so, if he should come creeping to his quarters in the dead of night with yet another one of his _offerings_. But when his personal comm lights up towards the beginning of sleep cycle, he finds his hand instinctively darting towards it to give Ren entry. He pulls his hand back at the last moment, startled at how their routine has become _habit_.

He considers not answering it—letting Ren suffer in silence before storming off. But the idea of Ren lurking at his door, some strange thing in his hands, for what could possibly be the rest of the sleep cycle proves more unsettling than the idea of Ren’s presence in his quarters. 

Hux rubs his face irritably, and sets down his datapad. “Come!” he barks, answering the comm. 

The doors to his quarters open with their usual hiss, revealing Ren in his full regalia. He is not fresh from the battlefield—he arrived early enough in the cycle to give Supreme Leader Snoke a full report before Hux met with him this afternoon—but there’s still something aggressive, _proud_ , about his posture. Whatever he has done, he has done it well. 

And brought Hux back the spoils. 

Ren does not tarry at the door. He crosses to Hux’s desk in a handful of long strides, the doors closing behind him with another hiss. He plants his latest offering in front of Hux, nearly on his datapad. A month ago, Hux would have glared at him, chided him, and noisily rearranged the contents of his desk.

Tonight, though, Hux looks up at Ren and feels… unsettled. Ren is waiting, expectantly as always, as if nothing has changed, as if Hux is not aware of exactly what lies behind that mask. 

Hux blinks and shakes his head slightly to clear it, before turning his attention to Ren’s gift. It’s large, about the size of two big hands clasped together, round, and wrapped haphazardly in thin brown paper. Hux tugs off his gloves, laying them neatly on the corner of his desk, and delicately peels the paper back.

It’s stuck, in spots, to the bruisingly purple fruit within. The skin is so soft and velvety that it almost looks like a living, breathing thing, despite the harshly broken stem marking where Ren tore off the tree that bore it. Hux’s mind momentarily snags on where this fruit has been. Ren must have carried it back himself, treating it gently on the shuttle back to the _Finalizer_ to avoid bruising it to a pulp. 

Hux swallows. Now that the fruit is exposed to the climate controlled air of his quarters, he catches its scent—sweet, and faintly nauseating so. Ren has not been able to outrun time. It’s overripening before their eyes.

Hux asks, “What is it?”

“A plumgarnet,” Ren says, and, for the first time, Hux can tell where the vocal distortion ends and Ren’s natural voice—his _human_ voice—begins. “Named for its color. Considered common in the capital of Val Denn, but comforting nonetheless.” 

This is how it goes. But tonight, it feels _different_. It gives Hux pause. Something’s twisting in his stomach at the idea of Ren watching him eat—at Ren licking his lips underneath his mask as Hux bites into the soft flesh of the plumgarnet. Ren’s head tilts as Hux’s pause lengthens into a silence. “Eat it,” Ren urges, as if Hux has somehow _forgotten_ what to do when presented with food.

Hux studies the fruit. He could obey Ren. Eat the plumgarnet. Describe its taste, weight, and texture. Let Ren watch, then walk away, leaving the strange, heavy thing between them untouched, unexamined, and unknown. 

Instead, Hux says: “I want you to eat it.”

Ren’s helmed head lifts, cowl shifting across his crown with the movement. “Excuse me?”

“I want you to eat it,” Hux repeats, more sure of himself. He takes in a sharp intake of breath to steady himself, and leans back in his chair. He schools his features into bemused neutrality as he looks Ren squarely in the visor. “If there’s nothing improper about our _arrangement_ , then let me return the favor. You have been so generous as of late, Lord Ren. I would hate for it to go unrewarded.”

Ren does not respond. He does not respond for long enough that Hux wonders if Ren will refuse him outright, obscure sensibilities offended, but Ren suddenly drops his head in a sharp nod of assent. His gloved hands lift to his mask, and there’s a sharp hiss as the latches disengage and decompress. He pulls it off, shaking his cowl back, and tucks it underneath his arm. 

The sight of Ren’s bare face strikes Hux anew, although it has been often in his thoughts these past weeks. His memory, though, made it too regular, too symmetrical, correcting the crookedness of his jaw and diminishing the overripe fullness of his mouth. Ren is brutal. Ren is beautiful. Ren looks like no man Hux has ever sought out. 

Ren stares steadily at him, undisturbed by his exposed face, and, for the first time, Hux wonders if Ren thought he knew from the first what Ren was. The thought is too much to bear. Hux turns his attention to the plumgarnet. 

The skin is soft enough to indicate that it would be better to cut it away from his datapad and personal console. Taking the plumgarnet delicately by its paper-covered base, Hux relocates it to his side table. The armchair closest to him is angled out. He’d needed enough space to extend his legs when yesterday’s reports threatened to turn into this morning’s. He doesn’t correct the angle as he sinks neatly into it, leaning instead on the right arm to reach the table.

He’s forgotten a knife, he suddenly realizes, but when he looks up, Ren is already one step ahead of him, stepping over to hand him the knife he brought to cut the fruit handle-first. “Thank you,” Hux says, taking it. His thumb brushes against the purlicue of Ren’s leather-clad hand, and his skin prickles faintly at the contact.

Hux purses his lips and focuses on cutting up the fruit. He tentatively slices along the slight indent along its circumference, a caution rewarded when the knife hits what must be the stone. He twists the fruit, completing the incision, and sets down the knife to pry it apart with his fingers. 

Ren is right—the innards do look like a garnet, fading from the deep purple of the skin to a more vivid, even lurid, red and orange within. The plumgarnet’s flesh is faintly translucent, like a citrus. It’s wet, sticky, and faintly obscene. Hux can imagine how it would feel in his mouth—full to bursting. The stone is not smooth, but jagged, dark, and almost crystalline.

The intoxicatingly sweet smell is even stronger with the fruit actually open. Hux pries the stone out with his fingertips. It makes a moist, crunching noise as it separates from the flesh. It looks even more like a crystal out of its natural context, catching the light of his quarters in its faceted angles. He sets it aside, to keep. 

The plumgarnet’s juices are stickier than he anticipated, so Hux takes a moment to wipe his fingers on the crumbled paper before shucking off his jacket. He folds it neatly over the back of the armchair, and rolls up his sleeves, avoiding Ren’s eye. Picking the knife back up, he cuts the plumgarnet into neat, thick slices that he then halves again, fanning them out. The paper turns translucent where the flesh of the fruit wets it. 

When he’s run out of plumgarnet to slice, Hux comes back to the situation at hand with a jolt. Ren is still in the same place, looming over him from a respectful distance. He glances up, unsure of exactly _how_ to feed the fruit to Ren, but Ren solves that problem by kneeling at his feet in a single, surprisingly elegant movement. 

Hux has often thought, in anger and, in the past few weeks, prurient curiosity, that this would be the most ideal position for Ren. But despite Ren’s submissive posture, he feels no more in control of Ren than before. The way his dark, longish hair falls around his face and the high, curved collar he wears give his face a leonine cant. He looks like a wild thing brought to heel only by his own whim, not by any skill on the part of his would-be tamer. 

Hux swallows again. His skin prickles where it’s exposed. “Open your mouth,” he says, and Ren, eyes still calm, obediently parts his lips, revealing his crooked teeth and wet, pink tongue. 

Hux takes a slice of plumgarnet with his right hand and presses it to Ren’s mouth, against his lips. Ren takes it with his teeth. Hux watches him chew slowly and then swallow, with an audible noise. Hux is suddenly displeased with Ren’s collar—he wants to see Ren’s adam’s apple bob with the motion. “How does it taste?” Hux asks.

“Tart. Sweet,” Ren says. “But not as sweet as it smells. There’s a certain clarity to it.” Ren lifts his chin and glances at the table, as if to say, _again_. 

Hux obliges him. This time, Ren does not take the plumgarnet with his teeth, so Hux must press it against his tongue, the tops of his fingers scraping against the edges of his teeth. Ren’s lips close on the juice-wet tips of his fingers, as plush to the touch as they look. Ren does not break eye contact with him for an instant as he chews and swallows.

“How does it feel in your mouth?” Hux asks, quieter than before. 

“Heavy,” Ren says. “Nourishing.” He opens his mouth for more. Hux reaches for another slice without even looking. 

Hux finds he _can’t_ look away as he continues to feed him. Ren’s face is all he knows of Ren’s body, but he’s suddenly so aware of him as a physical being, whole and entire. Of the breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of his arms, the connected line their bodies make when Hux’s fingers press into the moist heat of Ren’s mouth. Plumgarnet juice shines on Ren’s lower lip where the flesh of the fruit drags against it. Hux’s hand is growing slick and slightly tacky from its juices.

All Hux can hear is their own ragged breathing and the moist sounds of Ren chewing, swallowing, and parting his lips. Faintly, as if though from a great distance, Hux can hear the hum of the climate control unit. Despite its obvious labor, he feels warm, as if heat is radiating into his body from the tips of his fingers as he presses them into Ren’s waiting mouth. 

They come, too soon, to the last slice. Hux pushes the plumgarnet into Ren’s mouth. He lets two of his wet fingers linger on Ren’s closed lips as Ren chews and swallows. Ren licks his lips, tongue brushing against Hux’s fingers. Hux’s breathing catches. He wants to reach out and grab another slice, he wants to keep feeding Ren, stay in this strange, tense place they’ve brought themselves to, but—

“There’s no more,” Hux breathes. Ren nods, face shifting under Hux’s fingers. For a moment, for one hideous moment, Hux thinks that’s all there’s going to be. 

But when he lifts his fingers from Ren’s face, one of Ren’s big hands catches his wrist, pressing his palm to Ren’s face, cupping the curve of his cheek. Without breaking eye contact, Ren turns into Hux’s palm, pressing his lips against it. Hux swallows as Ren’s tongue darts out to lick his hand clean of the plumgarnet juice. He makes a sharp, startled noise when Ren’s mouth trails up to take two of his fingers in his mouth. 

Ren’s mouth is hot and wet around Hux’s fingers, and when he _sucks_ , cheeks hollowing, Hux can’t help but vocalize again, a vague, guttural “ _ah_ ” of surprise. Ren pulls off his middle and index fingers to give his ring and little fingers the same treatment. Hux’s hand goes limp in Ren’s, allowing him to manipulate it easily. Hux can feel his heart hammering in his chest as Ren lets his wet fingers trail out of his mouth and turns his attention to Hux’s thumb.

Ren actually closes his eyes—Hux is suddenly frantic with the question of whether or not either of them have even blinked since Ren knelt at his feet—as he takes his thumb in his mouth, and _want_ rages through Hux at the sight of it. He tries to press his thumb into Ren’s lower lip, expose the inside of it, but Ren’s already tugging his hand away.

Hux should pull his hand back, wipe it dry now that it’s been so thoroughly cleaned, but Ren doesn’t surrender it. Instead, he turns Hux’s palm up, and finally leans forward to kiss a slow trail up the long tendons of his forearm. His lips are soft against Hux’s skin, inclined head dark against his pale flesh. As he draws closer, Hux can almost taste his scent on his tongue. 

Hux finds himself hungry for it.

He grunts in surprise when Ren presses a kiss into the angular niche of his elbow. He tries to catch the back of Ren’s head with his outstretched hand to press him closer, but when his fingers brush against Ren’s hair, Ren pulls back, sitting onto his haunches. 

There’s a sharp, hungry look glittering in Ren’s eyes as Hux meets them. Ren’s gaze hooks, viscerally, into some vulnerable, wanting part of himself. But Ren does not move. He _waits_.

But not for long. As if possessed, Hux finds himself unbuttoning his shirt, eyes fixed on Ren’s. Ren’s eyes dart briefly to the column of his neck, the hollow of his throat, the long double curve of his clavicle as they’re revealed to him, but they always return to Hux’s eyes. 

It should be unsettling, exposing himself for Ren’s _consumption_. It isn’t. Instead, it feels like the _point_ of this entire ritual, the destination they have been moving clumsily but steadily towards.

Hux tugs at his cuffs, one at a time, to strip his sleeves off, letting the shirt pool around his hips. He’s left in his undershirt, hyper-aware of the nakedness of his shoulders. His skin prickles in the cool, climate controlled air of his quarters, under the hungry heat of Ren’s gaze. 

Swallowing, Hux leans forward. He extends his arm at an awkward angle, hand upturned and bent to expose his wrist, the whole limb intended as a long, pale offering. He presses his wrist, blue veins lurid underneath the thin skin, to Ren’s cheek. Ren makes a low, faint noise of content, like an overgrown felinx, and turns his face into Hux’s arm. His thick hair is soft against Hux’s inner arm as Ren shifts to pick up where he left off.

Ren presses a kiss to the slight but present curve of Hux’s bicep. His mouth is open, wet, and Hux can feel the flat fronts of his crooked teeth press into his skin. 

_They should be sharper_ , Hux thinks, absurdly, even as his breathing starts to come shorter and shallower. Ren continues up his arm, leaving wet spots in his wake. When his mouth leaves Hux’s skin, Hux thinks that the moment has, finally, come, but Ren’s great head bobs before him for a moment. Instead, Ren presses an open-mouthed kiss to his neck, teeth scraping against the delicate skin.

A month ago, Hux thought that Ren was alien enough, beast enough to kill like this, rip out a man’s throat with his teeth. He lets all the breath in his lungs ghost out of his mouth, over his lips, in lieu of groaning. He feels light-headed, a feeling that only gets worse when Ren withdraws _again_.

Hux blinks at Ren for a moment. He looks _different_ —his lips seem fuller, as if swollen from worshipping Hux’s arm. The tension between them feels like a suffocating weight on Hux’s chest, paralyzing him.

And then Ren’s lip curves up towards a smirk. 

Hux fists his hand in Ren’s tunic and _pulls_ , smashing their mouths together with jarring force. _The angle’s all wrong_ , he thinks, stupidly—Ren’s taller than he is, he should be kissing up, not down. Ren’s big hands find purchase on his thighs, spurring Hux to slide the hand on Ren’s chest up and around the great collar to thread his fingers through Ren’s hair, pulling just a little. 

Ren’s lips part, as if sliced, against his, yielding the plumgarnet sweetness of his mouth. Ren’s right—it’s not as sweet as it smells. But Hux finds he can’t remember what plumgarnet smells like anymore, overwhelmed as he is by _Ren_ ’s scent—scorched, strange, and, despite it all, _human_. 

Ren could rise up, press Hux into the armchair, kiss him like he’s devouring him alive, but he doesn’t. Rather, it’s as if Ren himself is meant to be the last in the long line of delicacies he’s brought to lay at Hux’s feet in tribute and oblique affection. 

Hux’s left hand comes to rest on Ren’s chest, and Ren allows Hux to manipulate his head this way and that to his pleasure. The taste of plumgarnet fades from Ren’s mouth, leaving only the taste of _him_. 

Necessity prompts Hux to pull away, to take in a great gulp of cool air. But Ren is not far, nuzzling at the side of his face in a manner both domestic and disquieting. 

“How do I taste?” Ren asks.

“Better than you look,” Hux answers, and dips his head down, Ren’s low chuckle warm against his lips, for more. 

**Author's Note:**

> We are [reserve](http://reserve.tumblr.com), [imo](http://badspacebabies.tumblr.com/), and [eralkfang](http://eralkfang.tumblr.com/) \- otherwise known as Quadruple Eggplant Productions. Come find us on tumblr!
> 
> This is the first of many incredibly filthy and stupidly romantic collaborative kylux projects in the works. A thousand thanks to our beautiful and talented Anna, for cheering us on along the way, and for her marvelous art. xoxo


End file.
